Winchester College has never had a headmaster famed for flogging. Distinction in that regard is contested by Westminster and Eton: the former boasting Dr Busby, who flogged 16 future bishops while they were under his care, and the latter Dr Keate, who, it is said, flogged 30 boys in one session before discovering that they were his confirmation class expecting to be catechised in matters of the faith.

Winchester has for the most part relied not on the severity of magisterial punishment for its discipline but on the solidity of its system of life – though, it has to be recognised, not always with great success. Dr Joseph Warton, for example, was a gentle scholar and poet who lost control of the school and was forced to resign. His successor 40 years later, Dr Moberly, invented the newfangled “headmaster’s birching”, a Victorian reform which in the end ensured the general odium of the school community.